F1 The Movie review: Less story, more speed – and that’s exactly the point

Brad Pitt-starring film, from Top Gun: Maverick director, captures the emotional highs of Formula One

Brad Pitt, right, with co-star Damson Idris and real-life Formula One racing drivers. Getty Images

Reality is stranger than fiction. That’s certainly the case with Formula One. It’s a weird, wild world – more dangerous, more duplicitous and far more intricate than any one film could manage to capture.

So if you’re an F1 superfan, obsessed with the ins and outs, know that F1 The Movie is not made just for you. It’s for all of us. But, rest assured, it’s powerful enough where it counts to potentially inspire millions to join your ranks – and remind you of the feeling that sparked your obsession to begin with.

The film, directed by Top Gun: Maverick’s Joseph Kosinski, feels like a legacy sequel to a movie that never was. In it, Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a racing driver who returns to the sport he left behind 30 years after his first stint nearly killed him – teamed with a brash young rookie (Damson Idris as Joshua Pearce) whose talent doesn’t make up for his immaturity.

It is an underdog story, but it’s not a fantasy. There’s never any chance that the ageing Sonny is going to come from behind and win the championship. This is Formula One, after all. There, only a handful of teams each year have any chance of competing for the top prize. The rest are fighting for points, struggling to find a way to compete, and hoping for a single Sunday when perhaps everything may go their way.

F1 The Movie successfully captures the feeling of Formula One more than the particulars. Photo: Warner Bros / Apple Original Films

Kosinski got the idea while watching the first season of the docuseries F1 Drive to Survive on Netflix in 2020. That season, because the show was not yet a proven concept, the biggest teams refused to participate. So instead, the producers focused on crews that were lower on the food chain – a perspective that was shockingly potent.

It's a role tailor-made for Pitt. For the last several decades, he and his former colleague Tom Cruise have been predominantly playing a version of themselves on screen. Cruise’s movie persona is something of a real-life superhero saving the world from the future’s ills – both a deliberate anachronism and an inspiration to those around him. Pitt, meanwhile, has stuck with gruff, deeply flawed and traumatised characters on the fringes, each with a charisma that inevitably wins people over.

Sonny, much like Cruise’s Pete Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick, is the definitive version of the star's persona. In the story, after an accident forced him to step away from the sport, he spent the interim professionally gambling, driving taxis, and ruining his marriage – the latter a possible nod to Pitt's real-life struggles.

He joins the team mid-season at the behest of his former teammate turned team owner Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem). If they don't manage to win a race by the end of the season, the board will force a sale. Ruben desperately needs some of Sonny's old-school magic to shake things up.

Kim Bodnia as Kaspar and Javier Bardem as Ruben Cervantes. Photo: Warner Bros / Apple Original Films

But we're not here for the story. Its structure is one you've seen many times before. Underdog sport dramas tend to follow the same formula. So do stories about retired gunslingers brought back for one last job. But like an F1 car, while the chassis may always look roughly the same, it's the engine that counts.

Maverick was the same. There, just as here, story is secondary. What made that film transcendent was, through sheer technical filmmaking and performance, it viscerally captured the feeling of flying a fighter jet. It's a film that hits you deep in the gut, creating a sense of euphoria that leaves even its biggest fans struggling to articulate exactly why they love it so much.

In F1 The Movie, Kosinski has successfully translated Maverick's winning formula from one cockpit to another. Focus on the particulars, such as the legalities of Sonny's unconventional strategies, and you'll pull yourself out of the film and weaken the experience. Instead, I'd suggest, go along for the ride.

Pitt plays the definitive version of his long-running on-screen persona. Photo: Warner Bros / Apple Original Films

And what a ride it is – full of pulse-pounding Hans Zimmer music, frenetic cuts that never feel distracting (no easy feat!), immersive sound design and breathtaking cinematography. I found myself, at times, digging my nails into the arms of my chair.

Few movies literally place me on the edge of my seat, and F1 was one of them – especially during the Abu Dhabi-set finale.

My nails never clawed beneath the surface, though. And neither did the film's. Throughout, the characters ask each other why they do what they do, and never even try to come up with a reasonable answer. By the end, Sonny is not a changed man. He has no great epiphany, and neither will you. Instead, he's just a man chasing a feeling.

What matters – and what makes the film great – is that you feel it too.

F1 The Movie is in cinemas Thursday across the Middle East